Best note taking apps for the iPad

Looking to use your Apple tablet for productivity purposes? Why not check out our list of the best note taking apps for iPad. Apple Pencil not required.

Looking to use your Apple tablet for productivity purposes? Why not check out our list of the best note taking apps for iPad. Apple Pencil not required.

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The iPad’s strength lies primarily in its mix of portability and performance. It’s great for web browsing, light photo editing, very small amounts of video editing, and — for the purposes of this article — note taking. The iPad is a great note-taking device by nature, but that’s only half the battle. You also have the right apps for the job.

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the best note taking apps for ipad.

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Bear

Price: Free/ $15

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Sometimes when you have writing or note-taking to do, you just want the program you're using to get out of the way and provide a clean experience. That's exactly what Bear can give you. On top of just looking great, Bear has a number of handy features for those who take a lot of notes, including markdown support, organization using hashtags, tagging support using the @ symbol and more. If using a pencil is more your style, the app supports Apple Pencil too. You can also use a web clipping feature just as you would find in something like Evernote.

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Evernote

Price: Free / $70

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Evernote is one of, if not the most well-known third-party note-taking app available. You can get it for most devices as a native application, and also access it via web browser. The iPad app has come a long way lately, delivering an excellent user experience for casual, intermediate, and professional note-takers. Organizing your notes in notebooks, and even further with tags makes finding old notes very easy. If you can convince your team to make the leap, you can use Evernote to collaborate on documents and chat internally.

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Inko Whiteboard

Price: Free / $19.99 / $99.99

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The Inko Whiteboard app is an excellent way to collaborate with classmates or colleagues. As you might have guessed by the name, the app makes the iPad act as a collaborative whiteboard. Without using a Wi-Fi access point you can sync up to 8 devices, and with a Wi-Fi access point, you can sync up to 12. Once synced, you and your team can share the same whiteboard space to take notes, draw, brainstorm, and more. The biggest bummer about this app is that unless your class or work can shell out $99.99 for a Hero Plan, each user pay the one-time fee of $19.99.

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Microsoft OneNote

Price: Free

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Made by one of Apple’s major competitors, Microsoft OneNote for iPad is a surprisingly good note taking app. This one allows you to share your notes across all of your note-taking devices with Microsoft office installed or with access to the OneNote website. Basically, it takes the idea of physical notebooks into the digital world, allowing you to create a new notebook for every class or job. OneNote even lets you import other documents and images, including PDFs. Just upload a document from class or work right into the same notebook to keep all of your work in one place.

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Apple Notes

Price: Free

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Though it's a bundled app with the iPad, there is a lot to be said about the Notes app. It's simple, efficient, and gets the job done without getting in the way. When carrying the iPad around leisurely, or using it for work every day, it's easy to open up the Notes app and get to working. It syncs across all of your Apple devices seamlessly and has some pretty nice features built in, such as rich text formatting, handwriting support, collaboration, and more.

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Pages

Price: Free

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If you need an app more suited for long-form writing, but you're a fan of Apple's software, the Pages app is a good option. The Pages app is very much akin to Google Docs in that you can collaborate with classmates or co-workers, annotate documents, and more. It also fully supports Apple Pencil (of course) and comes preloaded with a bunch of templates for documents, presentations, and more. The biggest problem you are likely to face with Pages is that opening someone else's Word document may introduce some formatting issues. Not many of your friends are likely to use Pages, so it also might be hard to convince them to collaborate with you.

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Paper by FiftyThree

Price: Free / $10

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Paper by FiftyThree has always been one of my favorite apps for quick sketches, doodles, and even text notes. The app's maintained the same overall UI over the years, which collects your sketches and notes in notebooks with unique covers. The page-turning mechanic and easy-to-use tools make this a very fun (and powerful) app to use. For those who like to doodle in class, this app has full Apple Pencil support, though the maker of the app also sells a stylus of their own.

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Whink

Price: $5.99

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When you think of note-taking apps for iPad, your mind likely goes to typing or writing with the Apple Pencil. Whink can do both of those well, and it can also record audio, so you a complete record of your conversations, interviews, or meetings. Outside of that nifty feature, Whink is a very robust note-taking app. It gives you very cool fonts to choose from, makes it easy to create shapes, format headings and sub-headings, and more.

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These are some of the best note taking apps for ipad but there are tons more to choose from. Did we miss your favorite? If so, let us know about it in the comments below!